How where and on what do we consume our audio?

Some interesting UK research from Audiometrics who are “specialists in audience research, data analysis and strategic insights for the audio and radio sector” a newish service provided by AudienceNet. This was presented to key companies from the sector at an initial meeting of the Internet Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) Audio Council yesterday which was founded “in early 2013 to educate the market about the possibilities offered by advertising in an online audio environment.”

How – Overall they conclude that 90% of us listen to audio and 48% (51% male 45% female) of us consume it via the internet. In an age analysis this rises to 75% for 15-24 year olds and 59% in the 25-34 year age range.

Where – their graphic (which we have taken the liberty of editing in our header) shows for the total UK population aged 15 and above listening locations:

At home – 77%

In-car / vehicle / public transport – 51%

Workplace – 17%

Walking / sitting in a public place -14%

Club / pub / bar – 9%

At a gym – 8%

On what- Unsurprisingly 53% of the 15-24 year olds were found to have listened on their computer/laptop/notebooks and 51% on their smartphone / mobile phone.

Click for Infographic (pdf)

When asking about the single preferred device overall 35% still went for the radio but amazingly, to us, this dropped to 3% for teenagers!

The tablet as a device didn’t seem to rank particularly highly in any section scoring less than 10% throughout.

“These new figures help to highlight just how mainstream listening to audio in a digital environment has become – and how vibrant a sector this is,” said IAB Editorial Manager Stuart Aitken, Chair of the IAB’s Audio Council. “We’re looking forward to working with AudienceNet in the coming months to produce a report called ‘Listening Britain’ which will build on this research and look closer at behaviours within this space.”

The total net advertising expenditure within the UK online audio sector was estimated to be £25m-£30m in 2011 [source: IAB]. Revenues to British record labels from online audio streaming were £49m in 2012 [source: BPI].

We look forward to hearing all about Listening Britain!

Sources: Audiometrics and IAB

Definition: Weekly reach data constitute listening for five minutes or more at any one time during the last seven days to AM/FM/LW/DAB/SW radio broadcast stations online and/or audio content available only on the internet.

We assume all the percentages sum to greater than 100% as we all consume our audio in multiple places and by multiple means on multiple devices!